Remote work is not new, but many companies have been reluctant to make the switch until recently. Some business managers wonder about potential consequences to productivity and if employees will take advantage of the work from home arrangement, in addition to harboring concerns about limited communication. However, there’s one solution that can benefit the future of remote work: artificial intelligence (AI). AI has entered the traditional workplace in various ways and impacted areas from employee training and onboarding to hiring and recruitment. What’s new is the way that AI can help improve productivity and processes for remote workers. Here’s more about the advantages of AI for remote workers and how businesses can utilize them:
Understanding the Remote Worker
Although it is common for companies in technology fields to employ remote workers, large corporations are also beginning to make the transition and add more of them to their in-office teams. Many long-time remote workers are technologically savvy and self-motivated, but this isn’t always true with more people than ever entering the remote-work space for the first time. Although it can seem like an ideal arrangement for employees to work from the comfort of their home, there can be some challenges. Setbacks with communication, visibility, and collaboration can occur in a remote-work environment, especially for those unused to working from home. Businesses can utilize AI to address these problems, improving worker productivity and satisfaction.
AI’s Role in Today’s Workplace
Business owners are beginning to see how AI can benefit operations and worker productivity. For example, it is regularly used to reallocate mundane and time-consuming tasks from human workers. AI can take care menial, repetitive tasks in a fraction of the time that it might take a human to complete, allowing workers to focus on more important tasks. The new normal will likely be using AI to assist employees in their roles. For instance, recruiting software developed by companies like Censia enable hiring managers to accelerate the process of weeding through resumes looking for qualified candidates. With AI solutions to handle the menial and time-consuming tasks, hiring managers can focus on the human elements to find the best fits for their organization and spend more time face-to-face with potential new hires.
Improving Worker Productivity and Collaboration
AI is frequently used in customer service, with many companies implementing AI-driven chat bots and customer-support tools. With the ability to access large amounts of information in seconds, these applications can often answer customer questions without needing to involve a human being. They can also redirect a customer to the right representative, an important feature for remote workers. Whereas a shared office space allows employees to see and directly communicate with each other, remote work can make it difficult to determine who is immediately available to help a customer if an automated system transfers the person to the wrong department. This can adversely affect customer satisfaction if they have to wait too long while the remove worker figures out who can assist them. With an AI digital robot handling menial common issues and connecting customers to the appropriate representative, workers can focus more on each customer. It also speeds up the customer-support process.
Moreover, AI can facilitate access to crucial resources for remote workers and improve collaboration among a company’s entire workforce. For instance, AI-powdered systems can automate data retrieval to help employees locate answers to critical time-sensitive questions or swiftly identify coworkers with the necessary knowledge to solve a problem that they’re unfamiliar with. Additionally, some companies offer applications that can create skill profiles of a company’s workforce and allow accessibility on mobile devices such as tablets or phones.
Helping Managers Monitor Data Exchanges and Progress
One of the difficulties with remote work for managers is keeping track of business operations and factors such as various data and employee activity when employees are not in a physical office. Managers have an easier time monitoring customer relationships, the information being exchanged, and other processes when they can check in with their team members in person. AI tools can automatically sync data across systems and departments so that information is compiled in one place. In customer service, this can allow management to see newly-added accounts and determine where more attention is needed with specific customers while working with a remote team.
Artificial intelligence can also assist in gathering information about employees, enabling managers to acquire a sense of an employee’s progress, patterns in client communication, and performance trends. Although this is not a substitute for in-person performance reviews and working with employees within a shared space, the data collected by AI tools can help managers feel more engaged with their teams in a remote-work setting.
Expanding internationally
With AI tools becoming more common in recruitment settings and helping hiring managers save time and money, companies can expand their workforce internationally through remote workers. When they can access talent all over the world rather than being restricted by their location, it can become easier to attract and retain the best employees. Combining AI and remote work in this way makes it easy to become a global corporation.